


gold light falling backwards through the glass

by rayguntomyhead



Series: babylon burning [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Gen, Implied Ace Character, Mentions of Violence, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, War, blanket warning for fucked-up people coping with fucked-up things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24953284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayguntomyhead/pseuds/rayguntomyhead
Summary: “Want some?” Hot Rod says, offers the cygarillo without looking. It’s cold night, an alone-in-a-time-out-of place kind of night, here on the edge of the roof. The moonlight spills out golden in the sky, and he’s got a drink and dross and the wind.Or Drift joins the Wreckers
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock & Hot Rod
Series: babylon burning [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767436
Comments: 10
Kudos: 34





	gold light falling backwards through the glass

**Author's Note:**

> more late night Hot Rod bits this time with bonus future amica Drift. Sort of born out of why Rodimus pokes at Drift by calling him a Decepticon, but mostly because i love them.

“Want some?” Hot Rod says, offers the cygarillo without looking. It’s cold night, an alone-in-a-time-out-of place kind of night, here on the edge of the roof. The moonlight spills out golden in the sky, and he’s got a drink and dross and the wind. 

Drift hesitates, Hot Rod can feel it in his field, weighing the pull to duck back inside the Wrecker’s temporary squat with a muttered denial to forget this ever happened. The pull of the dross is stronger though and Drift doesn’t go, just folds himself next to Hot Rod on the balcony. Hot Rod takes a pull on the cygarillo, deep and sweet and drugging, and holds it in his mouth ’til it burns. It tastes like dulling and dead leaves, like forgetting, and he hands it over to Drift. 

The trees of this organic world raise below them like miasmas in the dark, twisted and strange. In the distance there’s rough chorus of barking, and above it the warbling chirrs of the avian life in treble counterpoint. 

“Last time I was here, this place was on fire,” Hot Rod says. “All that forest.” 

Smoke drifts around him, hazing the view until the flora distorts like some strange monstrous creatures, lurking in wait for to take vengeance on their creators.  Drift twirls the cyg around his digits, bringing it up then lowering it down and offering it back.

“Last time I was here I was setting it on fire,” he says. Hot Rod snorts.

“Was weirdly pretty, watching it burn,” Hot Rod says, because it was, a horrible inevitability, a destruction, unstoppable, but at least it was over. 

Drift sits there, quiet. 

“You were going by Deadlock then right?” Hot Rod says, because he remembers, remembers death and guns and a wild frenzied field of fanatic certainty. 

“Yeah,” Drift says. He doesn’t make excuses, doesn’t dissemble, just sits there slumped and hunched in on himself in a block of spiked edges and fuck-off field. Hot Rod pulls in a long inhale of smoke and hands the cygarillo over. 

“You’re an ace with those blasters,” Hot Rod says. 

“Yeah,” Drift says. He twists the cygarillo in his digits, a flash of embers in the dark. “Use swords now.”

So that’s what that fancy overcompensation of a jeweled blade is on his back.

“Never thought you were one for swords,” Hot Rod says. “Y’know they used to say that’s how you got your name, you and your one-shot kills.”

"Only thing I'm good at," Drift laughs, all gravel and guilt. “Pretty sure it wasn’t complimentary.”

Hot Rod makes a gimme motion, and Drift proffers his cyg back unsmoked. 

“Lot more swearing involved,” he says, nudges the bottle of rotgut over but Drift does’t take it.

“Why are you doing this,” he says, hands twisting on themselves now, tight, punishing. “You don’t have to be nice and slag. I know what I did.” 

Yeah.

“Acceleron, Piston, Kaput,” Hot Rod says. “Roulette, Scattergun, Ion.”

He dims his optics to nothing, swallows a mouth of rotgut. Drowns the burn in his chest with the burn in the his throat.

“Yeah,” he says, “I know.”

“I’ll always be a Decepticon,” Drift says. 

“You were,” Hot Rod says. “You’ll always have been. Don’t seem like you’re one now though. ‘Less that pretty badge welded on is secretly a clever ploy to infiltrate the best special task force in the universe. In which case kudos on getting past Kup.”

Drift doesn't appreciate his quip, and his field flare frustration, jagged and harsh.

“My kill count’s in the thousands,” he says, digits digging into pitted concrete.

“So’s mine,” Hot Rod says. He dims his optics, downs another swallow of rotgut. “But that’s ‘cause I blew up my city.” 

Sent all the beautiful, unpatched pieces of it in ricocheting in deadly fountains, shattering the war machines and then shattering his home, _we’ve touched the stars but we’re not forgiven._

Drift’s helm tilts back, staring at the sky. 

“Nyon,” he says. 

“Nyon,” Hot Rod says. “And then the war.” 

He tosses back another mouthful of rotgut.

"No one deserves redemption," he says. "We're here. We're trying."

"Is that why you're here, trying?" Drift says, hands smoothing over the roof now, slow and rhythmic.

"It's what I need," Hot Rod says, words tumbling out before he can stop them, hanging raw and open in the air. Too late to laugh it off, twist it all facetious. Somehow with Drift he almost doesn't want to. Weird.

"Not what you want?" Drift says

"Like I can have that," Hot Rod says, mouth quirking up. He takes a long drag on his cyg, holds it until he tastes the smoke in his mouth and blows it out.  “Only used to believe I'd get what I wanted someday.”

Drift doesn’t ask why it’s _used to_ , because he’s knows why it’s _used to_ , knows they’re all just dancing while Cybertron burns, a doomed showboating run around the galaxy in an all-hands shoot-em-up. 

“Got enough booze to share,” Hot Rod says. “You’re _definitely_ too sober right now.”

“I shouldn’t,” Drift says. “I’m supposed to be trying to abstain.” 

“Your choice,” Hot Rod says, downs more. He’d thought he should abstain, once, stay dancing above on his own; that’s a ship long sailed and anchored at sea, ’cause he’s alive and he’s hungry, empty. But he’s always going forward, never going back, and maybe someday he’ll get there. Even if it's not what he wanted maybe it's what he will. Some shining place on the hill where everything’s beautiful, golden, alive, and nothing much hurts at all.

“Fine, give it here,” Drift says, and plucks the cygarillo out of Hot Rod’s hand. He’s close enough the heat of Hot Rod’s frame radiates, but he’s still shivering and Hot Rod can fix that. He lets his flames heat his plating, filling the air, until they’re wrapped in their own little world of warmth. He tilts his head, grinning smugly when Drift gives him an incredulous look. 

“Gonna get the perks, if you stick around,” he says. “You’ll never be cold again.”

Drift’s face goes hungry, that kind of hungry your face only goes if you know what it’s like to be so cold you’ll never really be warm.

“C’mon, scootch closer,” Hot Rod says. “I don’t bite. Unless you’re into that. _Decepticon_ ,” he grins, and this time Drift grin back, small and quiet and full of everything he won’t say. He leans closer, braces his arms on his knees.

“I’m not into _any_ of that,” he says. “But thanks for the offer, hot shot.” 

“Anytime,” Hot Rod says. “Or no time, rather.” 

He giggles to himself because that was _gold_ , add, “Now are you gonna just sit there like a whole afthead or are you gonna get in on my awesome personal space heater thing?”

" _You're_ an afthead," Drift shoots back, snags the bottle for himself, and scoots himself close, their shoulders bumping.  Hot Rod snags the cygarillo back in compensation, head singing in heady victory, and it’s good, it’s all good even if it isn’t. Maybe this is the start of a beautiful friendship, maybe this is the start of something _good_ , because Hot Rod can feel it, the way he only feels things that are as true as the universe is vast. Drift is special, what they’re gonna have is special and he closes his eyes, pulls in a mouthful of smoke and makes a wish. 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are <3


End file.
